


What It Is, Is Not OK

by LondonLioness



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, No S04E03, childhood abuse (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 17:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17471546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LondonLioness/pseuds/LondonLioness
Summary: Sherlock says it's OK. John knows it's not, and comes to a stomach-churning realization.





	What It Is, Is Not OK

**Author's Note:**

> Immediately after I saw The Lying Detective, I picked my jaw up off the ground, wandered to my room, and this fell out of my pen. Sorry, Mofftiss, that little hug just doesn't get me where my heart needed to be!  
> Since this was immediately after I saw the episode, it ignores The Final Problem. So I guess, tiny AU in that regard.

# What It Is, Is Not OK

"Are you still seeing Ella?" John asked.  


"No, of course not," Sherlock mumbled, most of his attention on the fibre sample under his microscope lens. _Alpaca, yes, but not Peruvian. Commercially farmed, local...Scotland?_ He heard John utter an interrogative and turned his gaze from the eyepieces, having learned that failing to give someone your attention was a bit not good. "Sorry, what?"  


"I said, 'Why of course not?' I think therapy would help you."  


Sherlock frowned, confused. "I wasn't going for me. I was going to figure out how to help you. And she was rubbish at that. Her advice boiled down to, "Give him time." Mary was much more helpful."  


John looked down, lips tightening. "I'm not so sure, Sherlock. Mary's advice almost got you killed."  


"Worked, though. You're better."  


"Christ, Sherlock! What -- ?" John took a deep breath, reining in his temper. "You ended up in hospital. You came to within a hair of needing dialysis for the rest of your life. You're still struggling with withdrawals, and --"  


"I'm clean, and I'm staying clean," Sherlock interrupted.  


"I know," John hastened to assure him. "I'm just saying, the effects of this whole thing are going to be long-lasting. I can still see some bruises from when I --" he flushed with embarrassment, but forged on -- "beat you."  


"Which you apologised for," Sherlock replied. "It's fine, John."  


"No, it's not. That's not the kind of thing I should be able to shrug off with an apology Can't you see that?"  


"You forgave me for all the hell I put you through. I'm willing to call it even. Why is this a problem?"  


"Because --" John gathered his thoughts, needing to be clear. "What you did with your fake suicide was hurtful, but your motives were good. What I did, I did to hurt you. That's why I think you need therapy, Sherlock. You really shouldn't be OK with that."  


"You were expressing your anger, " Sherlock said, very reasonably.  


"Which I should have done without using you as a punching bag. Jesus, Sherlock, you just -- _laid_ there! You said I was entitled, and that's bollocks. No one is _ever_ entitled to hurt you. How can you not understand this?"  


The detective shook his head, feeling lost. Deducing the origin of alpaca fibres -- that kind of thing made sense. There was physical evidence, and a chain of logic to follow. Feelings -- he'd had to finally admit he had them, but he didn't understand them. "You would prefer that I stay angry with you?" he hazarded.  


"No!" The doctor sighed. "You're doing it again. You're framing the situation in terms of what I want, not what you need. Sherlock --" He drew his chair closer, needing to look his friend in the eye for this. "I'm no psychiatrist, but I see a pattern that alarms me. See, I know you can defend yourself. I've seen you fight like a demon when it's a matter of subduing a bad guy. But when your friends hit you -- and that is not a sentence that should even make sense -- you're completely passive. Molly slapped you over and over, and you literally didn't lift a finger. I beat you bloody, and you never so much as pushed me away."  


"I was high off my face, screaming and waving a scalpel around. Of course you had to subdue me."  


"And now you jump to defend --" his voice was suddenly strangled. His gaze went distant, and he turned a pasty white. "You're defending me," he repeated flatly. He drew in a deep breath, battling down a wave of nausea. "This is so bloody familiar." He huffed out a breathless laugh, but there was no mirth in it. "Every time. Every damn time. My mum would be cooking us breakfast and she'd turn from the stove and she'd have a split lip or an eye swollen shut, or she'd be holding her middle because she'd been -- kicked --" he had to swallow down the bile -- "and she'd spend the whole morning telling us what a wonderful man our father was; how much he loved and cared and provided for us, and how it was all her fault, really; she shouldn't have said or done whatever it was. I remember being eight -- eight! -- and thinking what a load of crap that was; nothing could justify --" He blinked hard, eyes brimming with hurt, and brushed his fingertips feather-light across the ugly green-black flower that had blossomed over Sherlock's right cheekbone. "And now I'm the one sitting at a table with someone I care deeply about, and I'm the one that's done the punching and kicking, and you're the one justifying and defending me, and that's all so wrong on so many levels, I can't even begin to count."  


Sherlock dove into his mind palace, frantically searching through his Social Interactions file. John was hurting and had initiated physical contact; what was the correct response? He took John's hand and gave it a gentle squeeze before releasing it. There was so much pain emanating from the other man he had to swallow hard himself to get his words out.  


"John, I'm sorry. You seem to want me to have feelings I just don't have. I'm not angry, and I don't blame you. We've both done things we regret. Can't we just move on from here?"  


"No, we can't, because 'here' is not a good place." John sighed, infinitely sad. "I know I apologised, and you forgave me and said it is what it is, but the main thing it is, is not OK."  


_He's going to leave,_ Sherlock thought, with a sudden sick stab of panic. _Take Rosie, and exit my life, for good this time. No, that can't happen. How can I make this right?_  


"You look scared," John noted. "What's going on in your head, Sherlock?"  


There was absolutely nothing in his Social Interactions file to help him with this one. The only thing he latched onto was that lying to John seldom ended well. He blurted, "Don't leave."  


"Leave," John echoed. "Might come to that, I suppose. But it's certainly not my intention. When I think about it, every time we've hurt each other, it's because one of us left the other behind. You left me to take down a madman's legacy and I left you to pursue an illusion behind a white picket fence. Not saying I didn't love Mary -- God knows I did -- but suburbia --" He mimed a full-body shudder, and both men grinned, the atmosphere lightening. "I say we tackle this thing head on, together, as we always should have been. Because what we had: the incandescent friendship, the rightness of it, the two of us against the world -- that's worth fighting for. What do you say?"  


Sherlock smiled. "I say, Captain Watson: Into battle!"  


John smiled back. "We're agreed, then. We're each going to pursue aggressive therapy to get ourselves right. I need to know _this_ \--" he ghosted his thumb over the bruised cheekbone-- "will never happen again. And you need to learn to value yourself. You can't keep sacrificing yourself; not only is it unhealthy, it makes you a rubbish sociopath."  


Sherlock laughed outright, and there was a lightness to it that hadn't been there for a long time. "Right, I have to work on that."  


John sighed and looked around wistfully at the friendly confines of 221B. "I want to move back in more than anything, but I don't think I should. Not until we're both a lot better."  


"Something to shoot for, then."  


"Yeah." The doctor pulled out his phone to check the time. "I gotta get Rosie."  


"'Kay." He trailed his friend to the door. John put his hand on the doorknob, then turned back and pulled Sherlock into a tight hug. It was comfort and friendship and a promise, and Sherlock surprised himself by hugging back just as hard. Then John left, and the next day, the battle began.  


From the beginning, it was intense. Each man had a lengthy list of demons to exorcise. Sherlock actually went inpatient for a while: the work he was doing required him to renovate his mind palace, and it was rather more than he could handle on his own. John visited faithfully and their other friends rallied around him as well, so that it was a rare day that he did not have a visitor. When he walked out of the hospital five weeks later, it was with a solid sense of himself with friends -- plural -- who loved and valued him. Not to be undone, John had used that time to uproot the causes of his anger issues and start lashing together raft of solid coping mechanisms.  


With each man in a better place, they started coming together. They frequently met in the park to push Rosie in her pram. They used the semi-public venue for a series of Very Long Talks, with young Miss Watson as an oblivious but effective chaperone.  


And finally, almost one year to the day after their conversation in the kitchen, John Watson hung his coat on the hook in the hallway of 221B, and came home.

-Fin-

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, Archive! I've been lurking for a long time, and finally decided to jump in! This is my first time posting, so please be kind!  
> I have no clue as to what you could see under a microscope that would tell you an alpaca's from Scotland, but hey, it's Sherlock! Also, there's a clue in here as to which city I come from; a cookie to whoever gets it!  
> And that's my exclamation point quota for the day...


End file.
